Monday, October 15, 2018

Since I’m hinting at it, here’s my shameless plug: if you can sit through four hours of football and its stoppage time, you can’t justify calling baseball boring. October belongs to America’s pastime. I feel that this whole landscape will look different a decade from now, with football at the lower half of the totem pole.

My opinion isn’t entirely biased. This issue with politics bleeding into the discussion is a serious crutch for an otherwise praised NFL, and until that’s no longer a factor, people are going to shift away. The NBA waters are nice these days too, I’m hearing.

(As always, views expressed in the article lede and comments are the views of the individual commenters and the submitter of the article and do not represent the views of Baseball Think Factory or its owner.)

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The entire basis of modern right wing political theory is that truth and facts are meaningless, and that the only thing that matters if how big you lie to keep the idiots in an uproar and thus in line.

Under the principles of sane centrism and sane center-leftism, she isn't Native American, never was -- or anything close. To the tribal left, maybe she is ... but they only think that because it's the opposite of what the tribal right thinks. It's not really even "thought" in any serious sense -- on either side.

Somewhat lost in all the other bull#### lately were Trump's claims that the Democrats had unanimously signed onto a "open borders bill" and that their Medicare-for-all plan would dismantle Medicare: the former being a complete fabrication and the latter being absurd on the face of it. (I mean, even if Medicare-for-all is impractical, "Everybody gets pie" does not mean "You lose your pie.")

Republicans don't even bother to disavow these lies anymore, but for that very reason they implicitly run on whatever benefit the lies provide. That's responsible conservatism, 2018-style.

Today's GOP is little more than a Trump cult, and has about as much to do with real conservatism as the Westboro Baptist Church. This is the party that Clapper so enthusiastically supports.

Umm ... Earth to Zonk ... capital has trounced and routed labor in the last four decades or so.

This is stupid on every level. It describes an economically illiterate paradigm. Earth to FLTB: “capital” and “labor” aren’t actually fighting each other. To the extent that “capital” and “labor” are even intelligible constructs, they have a symbiotic relationship, not an adversarial one. People have got to get off this zero-sum thinking. And to the extent one is merely making a claim about the absolute rather than relative fortunes of “labor,” it has been flourishing over the last forty years. Poverty is way down; standards of living are way up.

The most damaging news stories are those where the candidate appears to be scrambling for a response and has to change it, even slightly. Once you have a set response, it becomes an issue with two sides that many voters will tune out.

Now it's "Haw, she's Pocahontas" vs. "Pay up, bitch."

If he refuses to pay, he's a sore loser. If he forks over the money, he's conceding.

She has mediocre schooling credentials, by the standards of the places we're talking about.

I mean, I know that you haven't finished high school, and university is a glint in your eye, you're hoping a name brand university will give you an edge in the job market. And it can, to some extent. Though once you have a PhD (or a JD, in this case), where you did your undergrad is irrelevant. Once you're a postdoc or a professor, where you did your PhD is pretty much irrelevant.

She got a JD from Rutgers, was later a lecturer there (I'm assuming this is more in the American sense of the term, considering) - i.e., a shitty contract position. This is in line with a JD from Rutgers. She got what I'm construing to be an associate professor position at the University of Houston. Both Houston and Rutgers are ~50th in ranking is what I construe from Wikipedia, so unless that's a big change from 40 years ago, this all flows.

Moves to University of Texas, which is ranked ~15th, so that's pretty good. But she's a highly cited professor (A wikipedia link has her as the third most cited Bankruptcy/Commercial Law academic, so a poaching like that isn't surprising). Further moves to a top ~10, and a top ~1 school seem consistent with being a bit of a rising star, but that's consistent with her academic record as far as I can discern. I'd be open an argue it's inconsistent, but after having been a professor at two other universities, someone trying to make hay from where she got her degrees has no idea what they're talking about.

he ran against someone with the likeability and political skills of mildew, and still did poorly against her, but a quirk in the system’s design allowed someone who was severely outvoted to nevertheless be assigned the win.

And it can, to some extent. Though once you have a PhD (or a JD, in this case), where you did your undergrad is irrelevant.

LOL. There's no need to waste time reading your material any further than this howler. First, it's wrong. Second, one of the schools we're talking about is "where she got her JD," not just "where she did her undergrad." She "got her JD" at a mediocre law school. I mean, yeah, if she was Houston/Harvard, the Houston part wouldn't matter so much ... but she's nothing close.

The modern liberal concept "white nationalism" is nothing but the "question" of "ethnicity." "White privilege" same thing. George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin -- perceptions there purely a "question" of "ethnicity."

Yeah. Back to Plonkville you go. The firing squads can't come soon enough.

You're thinking of this semi-rationally, not as a Republican/conservative/Trumpholster would. In the world of MAGA morons, if everyone gets pie, then the pie is without merit and meaningless. Getting the pie isn't particularly important. Getting pie THAT THE THUGS AND FILTH DON'T GET is important. It's not about the pie as pie. It's about the pie as status and power to hold over those who you believe are less human than you.

This is stupid on every level. It describes an economically illiterate paradigm. Earth to FLTB:

Doctrinaire Randians don't speak from "Earth."

To the extent that “capital” and “labor” are even intelligible constructs, they have a symbiotic relationship, not an adversarial one.

Uh-huh, sure. And not only are they "intelligible constructs," they're easy to understand on Earth. No need for scare quotes; indeed, scare quoting a term like capital or labor makes one look peculiar and eccentric.

A wikipedia link has her as the third most cited Bankruptcy/Commercial Law academic, so a poaching like that isn't surprising.

I have no opinion on Warren's qualifications (I have not looked into them at all), but the idea that Ivy League schools are 100% efficient at getting the best is a ridiculous idea. Her trajectory, while not necessarily what happens for most, is certainly not uncommon. Top schools poach teaching talent (just as they poach top students through transfers) all the time.

I enlisted the Barna Group, a social research firm focused on religion and public life, to conduct a survey of 1,000 American adults. This study revealed that most Americans — more than three-quarters, actually — do not often have spiritual or religious conversations.

But here’s the real shocker: Practicing Christians who attend church regularly aren’t faring much better. A mere 13 percent had a spiritual conversation around once a week.

(...)For those who practice Christianity, such trends are confounding. It is a religion that has always produced progeny through the combination of spiritual speech and good deeds. Nearly every New Testament author speaks about the power of spiritual speech, and Jesus final command to his disciples was to go into the world and spread his teachings. You cannot be a Christian in a vacuum.

(...)Whenever I used religious terms I considered common — like “gospel” and “saved” — my conversation partner often stopped me mid-thought to ask for a definition, please. I’d try to rephrase those words in ordinary vernacular, but I couldn’t seem to articulate their meanings. Some words, like “sin,” now felt so negative that they lodged in my throat. Others, like “grace,” I’d spoken so often that I no longer knew what they meant.

In New York — as in much of America, increasingly — religious fluency is not assumed. Work often takes precedence over worship, social lives are prioritized over spiritual disciplines and most people save their Sunday-best clothing for Monday through Friday. In pluralistic contexts, our neighbors don’t read from the same script or draw from a common spiritual vocabulary.

According to my survey, a range of internal conflicts is driving Americans from God-talk. Some said these types of conversations create tension or arguments (28 percent); others feel put off by how religion has been politicized (17 percent); others still report not wanting to appear religious (7 percent), sound weird (6 percent) or seem extremist (5 percent). Whatever the reason, for most of us in this majority-Christian nation, our conversations almost never address the spirituality we claim is important.

(...)There is also a practical reason we need a revival in God-talk, specifically at this time in American history. Many people now avoid religious and spiritual language because they don’t like the way it has been used, misused and abused by others. But when people stop speaking God because they don’t like what these words have come to mean and the way they’ve been used, those who are causing the problem get to hog the microphone.

(...)Christians in 21st-century America now face our own serious “rhetorical problem.” We must work together to revive sacred speech and rekindle confidence in the vocabulary of faith. If we cannot rise to this occasion, sacred speech will continue its rapid decline — and the worst among us will continue to define what the word “Christian” means.

Here's PolitiFact's complete take on Warren and her DNA test, with all internal links included:

Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test

President Donald Trump has ridiculed Sen. Elizabeth Warren with the nickname Pocahontas since at least 2016. It goes back to a time in the mid 1980s when Warren first indicated on law school faculty forms that she had Native American ancestry.

"I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian," Trump said at a July 5 rally in Montana, challenging her to take a DNA test. Trump now denies saying that.

Nevertheless, Warren, D-Mass. – likely anticipating a run for president – has released a DNA report. Warren did get tested and the results did find Native American ancestry. We asked four experts to review her report and they all found it credible.

The researcher who analyzed Warren’s DNA, Carlos Bustamante, a professor of biomedical data science at Stanford University, said the results support a Native American ancestor for Warren “likely in the range of 6-10 generations ago."

In years, that would be anytime from 150 to 250 years ago, perhaps as far back as 1700.

There are limits to DNA testing. Warren has said that she was told her great-great-great-grandmother was Cherokee. Expert in anthropological genetics Deborah Bolnick said tribal identity is more cultural than biological. On top of that, tribes don’t have unique DNA.

You're thinking of this semi-rationally, not as a Republican/conservative/Trumpholster would. In the world of MAGA morons, if everyone gets pie, then the pie is without merit and meaningless. Getting the pie isn't particularly important. Getting pie THAT THE THUGS AND FILTH DON'T GET is important. It's not about the pie as pie. It's about the pie as status and power to hold over those who you believe are less human than you.

Not the language I would use, but yes, the underlying concept is true. The same song and dance played out, and continues on the fringes, WRT gay marriage. "Allowing gays to marry harms the institution of marriage" perfectly encapsulates this sentiment.

the idea that Ivy League schools are 100% efficient at getting the best is a ridiculous idea

Stronger humanities departments (which are not always the Ivies, by any means) hire from a pretty wide field of doctoral institutions. Time was when Yale hired from Princeton and Princeton from Yale and Harvard talked only to God, but that age is long gone. I don't know how law might differ. But the idea that you can look at a list of graduate institutions (in my field, at least), and judge the strength of the faculty by your impressions of the schools they attended is unrealistic. You do have to look at their CVs too, and better yet at their own grad students' CVs.

LOL. There's no need to waste time reading your material any further than this howler. First, it's wrong. Second, one of the schools we're talking about is "where she got her JD." She "got her JD" at a mediocre law school.

Look, I know your guidance counselor is really trying to sell you on the importance of where you do your undergrad. And it is important, unless you do a PhD. Then, nobody cares. In a field like law, where you (can) go straight from your JD to a professorship, where you did your PhD will matter some - you have a limited track record, so people have to fill in the blanks a bit. And - Warren went from a JD at Rutgers, a middling law school, to a professor job at Houston ... also a middling law school. Then to Texas, a somewhat better law school. At this point she's been a professor for several years - she has her own track record, so you don't need to guess at how she'll do as a professor, you already know. Once she's hired at Penn (and certainly once she's hired at Harvard), where she got her JD is a fart in the wind.

Yes, it's harder to climb up, and/or the best school attract the most ambitious and talented students, but it isn't the case that Harvard Law School is breaking the mold for minorities - the non-white faculty at Harvard Law School got their law degrees at Yale, Harvard, Yale, Harvard, Harvard, Yale, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, George Washington University, Harvard. While a sampling of white profs gives Chicago, Harvard, University of Richmond, Harvard, Columbia, Harvard, Harvard, University of St. Gallen, Chicago, Virginia, New York University, Yale, Northeastern - hmm, if anything, the white profs are coming a more diverse set of schools with less overall prestige.

You know everyone is on to the lie about you being a "moderate" with no agenda, right?

the lunacy of Trump is well-documented on these pages. when someone like Warren claims ancestry because a test makes it likely that she had a relative of that sort 200 years ago and people buy into it, I will point that out.

I want to see Trump's tax returns, I want Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court, and other bits of obviousness. and Warren tripling down on Native American is absurd. just take her out of the issue, and it becomes obvious to anyone. claiming minority status that you don't have is offensive; we don't need to check the laundry of the claimant to recognize that.

But a lot of people read a lot into a relatively recent Gallup survey showing young voter enthusiasm to be less than awe-inspiring.

As TFA notes, though - the last time there actually was a big spike in 18-29 turnout was 2006... and we all know what happened that year.

Ought to be noted, though - that even the Gallup numner (~25% 'definitely' voting) would match the 2006 turnout... and in any case - that Gallup poll looks like the outlier compared to other data we have.

I do not think 18-29 turnout is going to hit the number imagined in some of these results - even a nation-wide turnout of 18-29 inline with the 2017 Virginia election, though, would be bonkers Bluenami for the Democrats.

I'd be happy with a 25%+ - as in 2006 - that would be more than enough for the House and keep the Senate in the realm of the possible... not to mention, state races and legislatures. Still, if the number were to approach 30%? That's going to seriously muck with a whole lot of polling pre-election.... just like it did in Virginia in 2017. No rational pollster is going to model a result using 30% turnout for a demographic that has only managed 25% once in the last 20-30 years.

This is really the case I wish the Democrats made more to young voters... all too often, the narrative they sell is "older voters always come out to vote and make the decisions for you! So you better vote!" - when the reality is that midterm elections tend to track pretty well to young voter turnout. When they come out in even levels that are still quite low compared to other age demos - they have a huge impact and swing on the results.

the lunacy of Trump is well-documented on these pages. when someone like Warren claims ancestry because a test makes it likely that she had a relative of that sort 200 years ago and people buy into it, I will point that out.

And by doing so, validate and normalize Trump's lie-slander-lie-deny-lie-attack-lie approach to civil society. You're the reason the Overton window has shifted ever rightward, to the point where actual neo-Nazi organizations are embraced by the sitting "president" of the United States.

somebody's idea of "decline" is probably trying to squeeze the life out of moderates.

I just think moderates cut Trump - and the GOP since the era of Trump (which I'd argue did not begin in 2016) - a lot more slack than they cut Democrats.

You have delve into the world of celebrities, random internet people, things someone saw on a poster at a protest march to find any Trump comparables... and even then, I would argue that they're hard to find.... never mind that they actually have never won any primaries, much less GEs, much much less the Presidency.

Frankly, digging up the old Katrina thread i/r/t Kanye West was instructive, I think.

TDF, I have a car-buying question. (And, you know, feel free to demand reciprocation with, um, choral music questions.) Does my interest and possible requirement for a manual transmission offer me any additional leverage in negotiation? In other words, would dealers be looking - at least subconsciously - to unload those cars a little more liberally? I'm not really a hard-ass jerk negotiator, so I at least like to have some idea of whatever advantages I MIGHT have. (I have my eye at the moment on the Volvo C30 - a bit harder to find with decent mileage, but not impossible.)

President Donald Trump said that Sears Holdings Corp. had been mismanaged for years before it declared bankruptcy. Among those responsible for its management: his Treasury secretary.

Steven Mnuchin was a member of Sears’s board from 2005 until December 2016, and before that was a director for K-Mart Corp., which was acquired by Sears in 2005.

“Sears has been dying for many years,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Monday to inspect hurricane damage in Florida. “It’s been obviously improperly run for many years and it’s a shame.”

Mnuchin is also buddies with Eddie Lampert - college roommates, Lampert attended his confirmation hearing, etc.

Nothing really to do with Warren, but just a stray question for the (real) lawyers here: does "Lecturer" as a law-faculty rank usually mean a full-time teacher, or a lawyer with a practice who teaches the occasional course?

Arts and sciences lecturers, as Brian says, tend to have temporary full-time contracts and do a boatload of teaching. But I know in some other fields (architecture, for instance, and nursing) a lot of university teaching is done by active professionals – often as a mandatory accreditation requirement; you have to be practicing to teach architecture, as far as I know.

Here's PolitiFact's complete take on Warren and her DNA test, with all internal links included:

"I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian," Trump said at a July 5 rally in Montana, challenging her to take a DNA test. Trump now denies saying that.

Well, since this is a lie... by Politifact, it doesn't really inspire much confidence in the rest of their analysis. It is beyond cavil that Trump was describing a hypothetical situation, and they simply truncated the quote¹ to make it appear as if he was saying something different.

"I shouldn't tell you because I like to not give away secrets. But let's say I'm debating Pocahontas. I promise you I'll do this: I will take, you know those little kits they sell on television for two dollars? ‘Learn your heritage!’ … And in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims that she is of Indian heritage because her mother said she has high cheekbones — that is her only evidence, her mother said we have high cheekbones. We will take that little kit -- but we have to do it gently. Because we're in the #MeToo generation, so I have to be very gentle. And we will very gently take that kit, and slowly toss it, hoping it doesn't injure her arm, and we will say: ‘I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian.’ And let’s see what she does. I have a feeling she will say no. But we’ll hold that for the debates. Do me a favor and keep it within this room, because I don’t want to keep any secrets."

The hacks at Politifact -- because it would stick in their craw to actually admit that a Republican wasn't wrong about something -- go on to add: "We’ll leave it up to readers to decide whether this was a serious suggestion or a hypothetical scenario to amuse the crowd." But of course it wasn't a serious suggestion, as the quote makes clear. He's making a public announcement while telling everyone to be quiet about the "secret."

To the extent that “capital” and “labor” are even intelligible constructs, they have a symbiotic relationship, not an adversarial one.

In theory, sure. But in a world where the stock price of a successful company goes up when they layoff employees to down size, I am not so sure this is accurate.

Of course Stretchy is a lunatic (I assume he is the one originally quoted), but while more right, David is still wrong. And JL72 is still more right, but I would argue not specific enough.

Basically there are several different things happening regarding the economy and relationship between labor and capital. The first thing to consider is generation of value, which we can roughly call* profit. The generation of profit typically requires** both labor and capital in some proportion. For the generation of profit then labor and capital work together and are not in direct competition.

However, the story des not end there. What happens after (Mostly after) the profit is generated is this profit is dispersed to capital and labor. When it comes to dividing the spoils, well at that point capital and labor are very much in direct competition.

So how does this apply to the last few decades? Good question. In terms of generating profit capital has taken on more and more importance relative to labor for an incredibly obvious reason - technology, often automation. There is not a whole lot policy can do about that without harming the overall generation of profit. When dividing the spoils of the system though, that is where capital also has gained a large advantage in recent decades, and that is the result of policy (deliberate and not). Tax policy, bankruptcy laws, labor/union laws, and on and on a large number of laws/policies (not all exclusively GOP, but mostly) have favored capital over labor.

That one-two punch is what has really hurt labor the last few decades, certainly relative to capital. If you don't believe that then I suggest you look a how well the two groups have done over the last 40 years or so.

* Only roughly, because there is non monetary value accrued in the economy, obviously. Still profit is where the money is (That's a joke, son), so let's focus on just that for now.

** Yes, there are cases where only one is needed, but mostly those are edge cases and not all that interesting, and even they typically require past capital and labor.

Does my interest and possible requirement for a manual transmission offer me any additional leverage in negotiation?

have an ex-roommate and a nephew in the business, so a lesser level of expertise.

the answer, alas, is "it depends."

every car in the lot is taking up valuable space, and ownership wants them off the property (for the best price, of course). if you find a dealership with too many manual transmission cars and little hope of unloading them, you may get a steal. if they have only one and a few customers have sniffed, then you'll get no bargain at all.

so shop around, and make it clear that you will shop around (even if you won't).

does "Lecturer" as a law-faculty rank usually mean a full-time teacher, or a lawyer with a practice who teaches the occasional course?

I think of that term as more toward the latter - someone with a full-time job who also teaches. Although I do think I have seen it applied to someone who was on sabbatical from one law school and was doing some lecturing at another school (while working with a faculty member to write their book together).

if I get tested and I seem to have an ancestor from 200 years ago who is from Italy or Morocco or Argentina or Fiji, can I claim to be of that heritage? Or would doing so make me a lunatic?

Of course you can claim to be of that heritage, of course depending on what you mean by that. If you claim to be first generation, well that is a lie. If you claim to have distant connections then that is true. And of course first of all and most importantly race is still a dumb construct and in most ways past cultural.

A Korean baby adopted by a white Minnesota couple can certainly claim Korean heritage, and they of course have a connection to Korea. But if they never go to Korean, never study it, never learn anything about it other than what a typical white Minnesotan learns, and perhaps even rejects their Korean background what does it matter?

On the flipside if someone has a distant Native American ancestor that is part of family tradition and one seeks out information about that distant relative, learns about it, values it and makes it part of their family history and traditions does that matter?

Put simply heritage is about more than genetic markers. It is largely a cultural construct. Warren seems to have embraced her family heritage and basically gained nothing external by it (despite hysterical screams by some on the right).

What harm has been done by her embrace of her distant ancestor? What has she done that would cause you to - even by suggestion - label her as possibly a lunatic?

On the flipside if someone has a distant Native American ancestor that is part of family tradition and one seeks out information about that distant relative, learns about it, values it and makes it part of their family history and traditions does that matter?

Maybe, maybe not. But having a single Native ancestor seven or eight generations in the past, and all your other ancestors white ... doesn't make you Native. She said she was Native.

You're talking about the context of an individual company, not about classes of people called "labor" and "capital."

No, he was talking about the entire world of companies -- not an individual company.

In the entire world of companies, capital employs labor and negotiates with labor. (*) This really isn't difficult.

(*) And in a very real way, guides the lives of people who have only labor to sell to be able to eat. If all you have is labor to sell to eat, you won't eat unless you make yourself prospectively economically palatable to capital (**). This is a little more difficult to understand, but no less true.

New Times received leaked chat logs from Florida International University’s year-old TPUSA chapter, including of one member who responded to a question about how “edgy” the group’s “meme game” could be by responding: “avoid using the n word and don’t reference [white nationalist leader] Richard Spencer too much and don’t Jew hate … all the time”

Why, that's the group that had the attorney general chanting lock her up! along with the HS students, whose founder nabbed a choice Trump interview and whose book got a forward by lil Trump.

But, you know... it would be awful if anyone took this as some sort of tribal identifier because that would be unfair. If we did that, black-clad, mask wearers marching in the street might be used as stand-ins for Democrats and liberals.

Why, that's the group that had the attorney general chanting lock her up! along with the HS students, whose founder nabbed a choice Trump interview and whose book got a forward by lil Trump.

But, you know... it would be awful if anyone took this as some sort of tribal identifier because that would be unfair. If we did that, black-clad, mask wearers marching in the street might be used as stand-ins for Democrats and liberals.

Yes, zonk, tribalism and its accouterments are become more and more prevalent and strong.

On the flipside if someone has a distant Native American ancestor that is part of family tradition and one seeks out information about that distant relative, learns about it, values it and makes it part of their family history and traditions does that matter?

Maybe, maybe not. But having a single Native ancestor seven or eight generations in the past, and all your other ancestors white ... doesn't make you Native. She said she was Native.

From 227: Warren has said that she was told her great-great-great-grandmother was Cherokee.

Sounds like she's being railed against for the consistency of her claims and subsequent evidence supporting them. I know that's a pretty obnoxious thing to see when you're a Trumpholster. The Republican party declared war on the reality-based community 15 years ago, a natural extension of their affinity for the most deluded segments of American society.

Of course we all know that PoltiFact is part of the BiasedLeftWingMediaDeepState, so obviously they're just part of the coverup, unlike a certain president who's hiding his tax returns.

Well, they just lied in their "fact check" -- you even quoted their lies -- so it's not exactly a ringing endorsement of them, or of you. They linked to the video of the July rally but dishonestly started the clip late enough to cut off the context.

If this is one of their 423,918,283 documented Trump lies there's at least one less for him and one more for them.

Really, now, for them to enter into a truth telling battle with Trump... and lose? That's quite a feat.

Warren has said that she was told her great-great-great-grandmother was Cherokee.

That doesn't make her Native, either. She's not a Native American under any sane usage of the term. If, as appears to be happening, it becomes tribally catechismic to hold that she is, the sane among us are not bound by such things -- regardless of how many shoutdowns and screamfests are applied by the tribalists to the endeavor.

Conservativism’s main appeal to younger people these days is the politics of racial resentment, so those TPUSA logs aren’t surprising. Tough to make reddit memes about how awesome deregulation and defense spending are. Much easier to stick with “would you eat this bowl of skittles if one of them was poisonous?” truth-bombs.

20 years ago you could maybe win them over with religious appeals, but that ship has long since sailed.

I suppose that depends if your great-great-great-great-great grandkids want to lay claim to being 1/64 Trumpkin or not.

Yes, zonk, we know that you view the world through purely tribal eyes. "The other tribe started it," and "If you aren't entirely in my tribe, you're in the other tribe" are quintessentially tribal harrumphs.

"In the most exhaustive review undertaken of Elizabeth Warren’s professional history, the Globe found clear evidence, in documents and interviews, that her claim to Native American ethnicity was never considered by the Harvard Law faculty, which voted resoundingly to hire her, or by those who hired her to four prior positions at other law schools. At every step of her remarkable rise in the legal profession, the people responsible for hiring her saw her as a white woman."

The way I read her here, she concedes that she made the claim to Native American ethnicity when applying to Harvard -- but argues that they never considered her claim.

I have no idea what was in her head, and neither does anyone else posting here. My reading of this is that she made periodic claims to Native Ancestry at times (which seem specious at best) but didn't ever knowingly claim official minority status for the purpose of hoodwinking a government, school, or other official agency. Shady? Sure. Disqualifying? No more so than, say, Kavanaugh.

Anything and everything Warren (or Kavanaugh, for that matter) has ever been accused or suspected of PALES IN COMPARISON to the deplorable orange self-serving clown sitting in the White House.

"I shouldn't tell you because I like to not give away secrets. But let's say I'm debating Pocahontas. I promise you I'll do this: I will take, you know those little kits they sell on television for two dollars? ‘Learn your heritage!’ … And in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims that she is of Indian heritage because her mother said she has high cheekbones — that is her only evidence, her mother said we have high cheekbones. We will take that little kit -- but we have to do it gently. Because we're in the #MeToo generation, so I have to be very gentle. And we will very gently take that kit, and slowly toss it, hoping it doesn't injure her arm, and we will say: ‘I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian.’ And let’s see what she does. I have a feeling she will say no. But we’ll hold that for the debates. Do me a favor and keep it within this room, because I don’t want to keep any secrets."

The hacks at Politifact -- because it would stick in their craw to actually admit that a Republican wasn't wrong about something -- go on to add: "We’ll leave it up to readers to decide whether this was a serious suggestion or a hypothetical scenario to amuse the crowd." But of course it wasn't a serious suggestion, as the quote makes clear. He's making a public announcement while telling everyone to be quiet about the "secret."

Oh, please. Of course what Trump said wasn't a "serious" formal offer, but what of it? The implication was clear that Warren would either duck or fail a DNA test, and he got what he wanted out of it: Full political mileage, including endless repetition of his charge in the media.

Bottom line is that Trump issued an implicit challenge, and Warren met it. It won't move the needle a single inch in either direction, but both sides got what they wanted out of it. And PolitiFact's reputation comes out looking a whole lot more credible than yours, as usual.

Meh, not enough positive or negative to matter either way IMO. Of course I don't want her as the next Democratic nominee for President, I don't not want her either honestly, so I don't really care either way either.

If she's on the ticket in 2020, the story will resurface. "I already addressed this, and scientifically demonstrated everything I said was true" is more or less the best soundbite to have for when it does. Exhaust it now.

This is stupid on every level. It describes an economically illiterate paradigm. Earth to FLTB: “capital” and “labor” aren’t actually fighting each other. To the extent that “capital” and “labor” are even intelligible constructs, they have a symbiotic relationship, not an adversarial one. People have got to get off this zero-sum thinking. And to the extent one is merely making a claim about the absolute rather than relative fortunes of “labor,” it has been flourishing over the last forty years. Poverty is way down; standards of living are way up.

Should be noted - the two most glaring drops in US poverty that had a clearly sustained and lasting impact, beyond the annual economic winds in the last century?

They coincide with the passage of Social Security and 30 years later, Medicare.

Oh, please. Of course what Trump said wasn't a "serious" formal offer, but what of it?

Uh, "what of it" is that this is what we're talking about. People accused Trump of reneging on a serious formal offer, and then followed up by accusing him of lying when he responded by saying that he hadn't made such an offer.

TDF, I have a car-buying question. (And, you know, feel free to demand reciprocation with, um, choral music questions.) Does my interest and possible requirement for a manual transmission offer me any additional leverage in negotiation? In other words, would dealers be looking - at least subconsciously - to unload those cars a little more liberally? I'm not really a hard-ass jerk negotiator, so I at least like to have some idea of whatever advantages I MIGHT have. (I have my eye at the moment on the Volvo C30 - a bit harder to find with decent mileage, but not impossible.)

Probably not, especially if you're looking for a specific model.

On a new car, we have to pay the manufacturer X dollars for the car no matter what we might be able to sell it for. But on a used car, there is no set price and the market determines not just what we can charge you when you buy but what you "charge" us when you trade it in.

Very few people buy manuals any more, and the used car prices reflect that - the dealer may find it tough to find a buyer, so he should have any manual cars priced aggressively.

My biggest point of recommendations is use AutoTrader.com, KBB.com, or some other such site to see what you should pay. Everyone else does, and so dealers pretty much have to price that way.

“One of the things that makes Americans unique is that we value life. We think each life has intrinsic value and worth, whether you are a baby in the womb or an elderly woman.

But some lives we value more than others. For example, my dad valued the life of a rapist more than a distant cousin of Bill Clinton, so my dad released him from prison so that he could go to Missouri where he raped and murdered someone else.

Democrats have raised almost 2/3 of the total money for the House (not counting candidates who lost in primaries). Despite the fact that the GOP holds the incumbency advantage. Never been anything like that before in our House fundraising data, which goes back to 1998.
9:20 AM - 16 Oct 2018

65% to 35%.

Prior largest split was 56-44 R in 2012. 2006 was 50-50. 2010 was 52-48 R.

It’s like if the Bully said “That Nerd has a tiny dick” and the Nerd responded by pulling his pants down in the middle of a pep rally and announcing to the school “Nuh uh, as you all can see, it’s only slightly below average.”